r 

CA » 

F 144 
.P4 B9 
Copy 1 



.ADDRESS 

AT THE 

UNVEILING OF THE STATUE 

OF 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

IN THE 

CITY OF PATERSON, NEW JERSEY 

MAY 30, 1907 



BY 
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

President of Coliimbia University 



/ 



ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE 
OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

IN THE 

CITY OF PATERSON, N. J. 
May 30, 1907 

The large cities of the world are to be found where they are 
for good and sufficient reasons. We learn from historians and 
geog'raphers what those reasons are. They tell us that in the 
ancient world and in the modern world alike, men jfirst gath- 
ered themselves together in communities at points where pro- 
tection and self-defense were easy, or where commerce and 
industry were likely to develop with least obstacle or interfer- 
ence. A high hill or rock surmounted by a castle, about the 
walls of which the dependents of the feudal lord might gather, 
explains the existence of many a European town to-day. The 
mouths of navigable rivers, the proximity of sources of natural 
wealth, or convenient centers for distribution of supplies to 
more sparsely settled sections of the land, account for still other 
cities and towns. Occasionally we find that the site of a city 
has been deliberately chosen in order that a definite public 
policy may be carried out thereby. Such a city, the manner 
of the choosing of its site, and the purposes of 'those who were 
chiefly concerned in the choosing, become matters of unusual 
interest to the reader of history. 

In the United States there are at least two city sites which 
were deliberately chosen in pursuance of certain public ends. 
Both were chosen, or their choosing was made possible, by one 
and the same man. Both were chosen as part of one and the 
same policy — the building of the American people into a strong 
nation which should be both politically and industrially inde- 
pendent. These two city sites are that of Washington, selected 
to be the political capital of the new nation, and that of Pater- 
son, selected to be its industrial capital. The man behind the 



2 Address at the Unveiling of 

choice in each case was he whose name and fame we are gath- 
ered to honor — Alexander Hamihon. It is worth while to 
dwell for a few moments upon the man and the policies 
which called Paterson into existence. 

It was a part of Alexander Hamilton's statesmanship that 
the capital city of the new nation was Washington on the 
banks of the Potomac. To secure the assumption by the na- 
tional government of the war debt of the separate states, and 
so to hold the infant commonwealths together in a new and 
stout bond, he allowed the capital city to be fixed at the spot 
where the local pride of some of his chief opponents desired 
it to be. It was equally a part of Hamilton's statesmanship 
that the city of ^faterson was called into being on the banks 
of the Passaic. The same engineer who laid out the political 
capital drew the original plans for the industrial capital. Those 
plans, unfortunately, demanded the resources of a principality 
for their execution, and they came to naught. Had they been 
carried out, Colt's Hill yonder, now leveled to the ground, 
would have been, as Capitol Hill is in Washington, the center 
from which great avenues radiated through the industrial city 
of L'Enfant's imagination. Six miles square the city was to 
be, and the new world was to assert itself in industry, as in 
politics, from a capital seat. The plan was as striking as it 
was novel, and worthy of the political genius who conceived it. 

Why was Alexander Hamilton interested in building an 
industrial capital for the new nation, and in selecting its site ? 

The answer is to be found in the encyclopedic character of 
Hamilton's interests and in the broad sweep of his statesman- 
ship. In the eighteenth century the outlying parts of the world 
were looked upon by the older and controlling nations not only ' 
as political dependencies, but as industrial annexes. They 
were to grow and provide the raw materials of commerce 
and industry, which raw materials, whether dug from the 
ground or grown in the earth, were to be shipped to the 
motherland for manufacture, and shipped back again to the 
dependencies for purchase and consumption as finished prod- 
ucts. Hamilton knew perfectly well that the independence of 



The Statue of Alexander Hamilton 3, 

the United States was only partially achieved when the political 
shackles which bound the colonists to King George were 
broken. He knew that the people must be industrially inde- 
pendent as well, if their nation was to endure. He believed 
that the factory and the farm, the mine and the workshop, 
should be brought side by side, that through a diversity of 
employment and an economy of transportation charge, the 
economic prosperity of the people might be assured and 
advanced. 

As soon as Hamilton had secured the adoption of the Con- 
stitution, and even before he had, under the Constitution, 
riveted the bonds which held the states together by having the 
nation assume the separate state debts, he set about the task of 
building up diversified domestic industries. 

On January 15, 1790, the House of Representatives called 
upon Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, for a report 
upon the subject of manufactures, to deal particularly with 
the means of promoting those manufactures that would tend 
to render the United States independent of foreign nations for 
military and other essential supplies. On December 5, 1791, 
at the age of thirty-four, Hamilton responded to this request 
with a report which is both an economic and a political classic. 
Not only does he consider and pass in review the arguments 
advanced for and against the policy of building up domestic 
manufactures, if necessary by government aid, but he tells 
the House of Representatives precisely what manufactures had 
already been undertaken in the United States and what meas- 
ure of success might be expected to attend them. In the course 
of this remarkable report, Hamilton announced that a society 
was forming, with a sufficient capital, which was to prosecute, 
on a large scale, the making and printing of cotton goods. The 
society to which Hamilton referred was the Society for Estab- 
lishing Useful Manufactures, Avhich Society had been already 
constituted a body politic and corp6rate by the Legislature of 
the State of New Jersey in an Act passed November 22, 1791, 
or only a few cla3^s earlier than the date of Hamilton's report 
on manufactures. The Act relating to this Society provided in 



4 Address at the Unveiling of 

its twenty-sixth section that, since it was deemed important to 
the success of the undertaking, provision should be made for 
incorporating, with tlie consent of the inhabitants, such dis- 
trict, not exceeding six miles square, as might become the 
principal city of the intended establishment, which district 
should, when certain conditions were complied with, be the 
town of Paterson. 

Therefore, it may with justice be said that the town of 
Paterson was called into existence by Alexander Hamilton 
in pursuance of his policy of securing industrial independence 
for the people of the United States. Though his immediate 
plans were never carried out, yet cotton, flax, and silk, iron 
and steel, copper and brass, have since his day given employ- 
ment here to tens of thousands of intelligent workmen. Hamil- 
ton's policy succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of his imag- 
ination. Not one industrial capital, but hundreds, have sprung 
into existence to demonstrate its wisdom and effectiveness. 
From the looms of the Merrimac to those of the Piedmont, 
from the forges and furnaces of Pittsburgh to those of Colo- 
rado and beyond, scores of busy hives of industry bear tribute 
to the greatness of the man whose conscious purpose it was 
to make our nation strong enough to rule itself and strong 
enough to face the world with honest pride in its own strength. 

When, because of the water power afforded by the great 
falls of the Passaic, the Society for Establishing Useful Man- 
ufactures chose this spot as its site, it was a part of the town- 
ship of Acquackanonk, and but an insignificant handful of 
people were living here. The records say that the total number 
of houses was not over ten. Out of these small beginnings 
the present busy city has grown. Hamilton's interest in it was 
personal and very strong. The records of the Society for 
Establishing Useful Manufactures show plainly enough that 
he attended the early meetings of the Directors, and make it 
highly probable that not only did he draw the act of incorpo- 
ration itself, but guided the Society in its early policies as well. 
So we commemorate to-day not only a far-seeing statesman, 
who has forever associated his name with this spot, but a pur- 



The Statue of Alexa7ider Hamilto7i 5 

pose which has long since become part of the accepted pohcy 
of the people of the United States. Because of Hamilton's 
conspicuous public service, it would be becoming for his 
statue to stand in every city in the land; but if there is one 
city more than another in which it must stand, that city is 
Paterson. 

I 

It is not easy for us to picture accurately the political and 
social conditions which prevailed wdien the government of the 
United States was created. Looking back as we do upon the 
achievement as one of epoch-marking significance in the 
world's history, and seeing as we do the outlines of the great 
figures who participated in the work silhouetted against the 
background of the past, it is difficult to appreciate against what 
tremendous obstacles they labored and with what bitter antago- 
nisms they were forced to fight. If the history of the American 
Revolution and that of the building of the nation show human 
nature at its best, they also show it at its worst. Over against 
a Franklin, a Washington, and a Hamilton we must set the 
scurrilous pamphleteers, the selfish particularists, and the nar- 
row-minded politicians whose joint machinations it required 
almost infinite patience, infinite tact, and infinite wisdom to 
overcome. The greatness of Washington himself, marvelous 
as his achievements are now seen to be, rests in no small 
part upon what he put up with. A nature less great than his, 
a temper less serene, could not have failed to show resentment 
and anger at a time when either passion would have been 
dangerous to the cause in whose service his whole nature was 
enlisted. 

We are accustomed to think of the political controversies 
of our own day as bitter, and of the political methods which 
accompany them as base and dishonorable. The bitterness, the 
baseness, and the dishonor of to-day are as nothing in com- 
parison with the bitterness, the baseness, and the dishonor 
with which the great fathers of the nation were compelled to 
deal. Upon the devoted head of Washington himself was 
heaped every sort and kind of obloquy. Hamilton was called 



6 Address at the Unveiling of 

alternately a monarchist and a thief, a liar and a traitor. Men 
stopped at nothing to gain their political ends, and the writ- 
ings of not a few of our country's great men abound in pas- 
sages and records which bring the blush of shame to the 
cheek. 

This nation of ours was not built easily or in a day. The 
materials used in the structure were themselves refractory, and 
the arduous task of putting them together was time-consuming. 
The Constitutional Convention itself was in a sense a subter- 
fuge of Hamilton's and the outgrowth of a purely commercial 
conference, at which' the representatives of but five states were 
gathered, so difficult was it to unite the states for anyjDurpose. 
The maxims of the French Revolution were in the air, and 
Jefferson was playing with them, now as idpls, now as weap- 
ons. Men were swept off their feet by the power of formulas 
and phrases, and hard, clear thinking on the fundamental prin- 
ciples of politics and government was by no means so common 
as we are in the habit of supposing it was. 

To understand the history of the United States, we must 
realize that the nation has had two births : the first, its birth 
to union under Washington and Hamilton; the second, its 
birth to liberty under Lincoln. Our nation was not really 
made until the second birth was an accomplished fact. It is 
as absurd to speak of the United States as being the creation 
of the year 1776 or 1789 as it would be to speak of England 
as the creation of the year in which Hengist and Horsa first 
landed on its eastern coast. The birth throes of the United 
States of America began on the day when 

"The embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

They only ended when two brave Americans, whose con- 
sciences had brought them to place different and antagonistic 
meanings upon the structure of the government, met face to 
face at Appomattox to "beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruning-hooks." x 

In the long and difficult process of nation-building, five great 



The Statue of Alexander Hamilton . 7 

builders stand out above all others by reason of the supreme 
service that they rendered. Their places in the American 
pantheon are secure. Two were from Virginia, one from New 
York, one from New England, and one from the West. The 
five are Washington, Hamilton, Marshall, Webster, and Lin- 
coln. The placid and almost superhuman genius of Washing- 
ton, exhibited alike in war and in peace, made the beginnings 
possible. The constructive statesmanship, the tireless energy, 
and the persuasive eloquence of Hamilton laid the foundations 
and pointed the way. The judicial expositions of Marshall 
erected the legal superstructure. The powerful and illuminat- 
ing arguments of Webster instructed public opinion and pre- 
pared it to stand the terrible strain soon to be put upon it in 
the struggle for tiie maintenance of the union. The human 
insight, the skill, and the infinite, sad patience of Lincoln car- 
ried the work to its end. 

Others have served the people of the United States, and 
served them well. Others have been great party leaders, ad- 
mirable judges, far-sighted statesmen; but to these five — 
Washington, Hamilton, Marshall, Webster, and Lincoln 
— must be accorded the first and foremost place. To them, 
more than to any others, we owe the United States as we 
know it. 

Of these five nation-builders, Hamilton was in some respects 
the- most remarkable. Talleyrand, no mean judge, placed him 
on a par with the greatest European statesmen of his time, in- 
cluding even Pitt and Fox — a judgment more obviously mod- 
erate now than when it was made. Hamilton's genius was not 
only amazingly precocious, but it was really genius. His first 
report on the public credit and his report on manufactures, two 
of the greatest state papers in the English language, were the 
work, of a young man of but thirty-three or thirty-four. The 
political pamphlets of his boyhood, the military papers and 
reports of his youth, would do credit to experienced age. In 
his forty-seven years, Hamilton lived the life of generations 
of ordinary men. From the restless boyhood years on the dis- 
tant island in the Caribbean Sea through the stirring scenes 



8 Address at the Unveiling of 

of his student days in Columbia College; from the worried 
camp of Washington where, the merest stripling, he was 
clothed with heavy military responsibility, to his years of active 
practice in the courts, instructing the judges and illuminating 
the law; from the arduous work in the Constitutional Con- 
vention, a statesman trying to piece a nation together out of 
fragments, to his ceaseless labors with voice and pen to per- 
suade a reluctant people to accept the new government as their 
own; into the Cabinet as its presiding genius and to the busy 
Treasury where everything had to be created from an audit 
system and a mint to a nation's income; back into private life 
in name but in fact to the exercise of new power; all the way 
on to the fatal field at Weehawken, where, in obedience to a 
false and futile sense of honor, he gave up his life to the bullet 
of a political adversary, the story of Hamilton's life is full of 
dramatic interest and intensity. He represented the highest 
type of human product, a great intellect driven for high pur- 
poses by an imperious will. Facts, not phrases, were his 
counters ; principle, not expediency, was his guide. 

In all his career, Hamilton seems to have yielded but once 
to the temptation to use a local or a party interest, and then 
he made use of the local or party interest of his opponents. 
That was when he yielded to the sentiment to place the capital 
on the banks of the Potomac, in order to gain the votes 
needed to pass his Assumption bill. On no other occasion, 
whether when exerting his powers of persuasion to the utmost 
in the face of an adverse majority in the New York Conven- 
tion called to consider the ratification of the Constitution, or 
in his extraordinary appeals through the Federalist, or in the 
letters of Camillus written in defense of the Jay treaty, did 
he ever descend from the lofty heights of political principle. 
That is the reason why Hamilton's reports, his letters, and his 
speeches belong to the permanent literature of political science. 
The occasion for which he wrote was of the moment, but the 
mood in which he wrote and his method belong to the ages. 

Hamilton's policy had three ends in view. He wished to 
develop a financial policy that would bind the Union hard and 



The Statue of Alexander Hamilton 9 

fast; an industrial policy that would make it rich and, within 
the bounds of possibility, self-sufficient; and a foreign policy 
that would strengthen the political and economic independence 
already provided for. He accomplished them all, and all three 
are securely part of the permanent policy of the nation. Hamil- 
ton's statesmanship could have no higher tribute than this. He 
built not for the day, but for the nation's history. 

The little lion, as his friends affectionately called him, proved 
his greatness in yet another way. He put aside the acclaim and 
applause of his contemporaries that he might serve their chil- 
dren and their children's children, by laying broad and deep 
and strong the foundations of one of the great nations of the 
world. It would have been easy for Hamilton with his per- 
sonal charm, his alertness of mind, and his geniality of temper, 
to have been the idol of the populace of his time. But he was 
wise enough to know how cheap and tawdry a thing popularity 
is when principle and lasting usefulness have to be surrendered 
in return for it. To-day Hamilton has his reward. By com- 
mon consent he is now recognized not only as one of the very 
greatest of all Americans, but as a statesman whom the \^hole 
world is glad to honor for the political insight and sagacity 
that he displayed, for the marvelous range of his intellectual 
interests, for the philosophic structure of his mind, and for the 
imperishable service that he rendered to the cause of popular 
government everywhere. 

To an old and valued friend, Edward Carrington of Vir- 
ginia, Hamilton wrote an important letter in 1792. That 
letter states two essential points of his political creed to be, 
"first, the necessity of Union to the respectability and happi- 
ness of this country; and second, the necessity of an efficient 
general government to maintain the Union." He adds : "I 
am affectionately attached to the republican theory. I desire 
above all things to see the equality of political rights, exclu- 
sive of all hereditary distinction, firmly established by a prac- 
tical demonstration of its being consistent with the order and 
happiness of society.". The enemy which he most feared for 
his country was the spirit of faction and anarchy. 'Tf this 



lO Address at the Unveiling of . 

will not permit the ends of government to be attained under 
it," he adds, "if it engenders disorders in the community, all 
regular and orderly minds \\\\\ wish for a change, and the 
demagogues who have produced the disorder will make it for 
their own aggrandizement. This is the old story. If I were 
disposed to promote monarchy and overthrow State govern- 
ments, I would mount the hobby-horse of popularity ; I would 
cry out 'usurpation,' 'danger to liberty,' etc., etc. ; I would 
endeavor tO' prostrate the national government, raise a ferment, 
and then 'ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm.' " 

These words are both prophecy and history. They are a 
warning against the demagogue from one who was surrounded 
by them, little and big. They put us on our guard against 
the worst tendencies in others, as well as against the worst 
passions in ourselves. 

Hamilton's achievements are beyond our reach, but the 
lessons of his life are not hard for us to learn. The never- 
absent care for the public interest, the superb energy with 
which he pressed his policies upon the attention of the people, 
the unfailing regard for political principle, the grasp of con- 
crete facts of every sort, the undaunted courage of the man, 
mark Hamilton as an ideal public servant and public official. 
"He never lost sight of your interests," said Gouverneur Mor- 
ris in his funeral oration to the people who thronged about the 
murdered leader's bier. "Though he was compelled to aban- 
don public life," added Morris, "never, no, never for a moment 
did he abandon the public service." No higher praise could 
be given to a public man. 

The ebb and flow of the huge human tide which comes and 
goes at the meeting point of two of the most crowded and 
busiest streets in the world, surges daily past the tomb in 
Trinity churchyard where lie the ashes of the statesman, too 
great to be a successful party leader, to whom the United 
States of America owe an incalculable debt. Imagination 
tempts us to wonder how much of this great population and 
how much of the active business and financial strength- that 



The Statue of Alexander Hamilton 



1 1 



this human tide represents, would be in existence if Hamilton 
had not lived, or if his policies had not been accepted by the 
people of the United States. No man, we say, is indispensable. 
In a certain sense this must be true ; for the universe does not 
hang on a single personality. But is it not equally true, that 
great personalities do shape the course of events, and that 
if there had been no Hamilton, no Federalist, and no reports 
on the public credit and on manufactures, the history of the 
people of the United States might have been, indeed would 
certainly have been, very different? That history might still 
have been a proud one and the people themselves a great and 
successful people; but the nation as we know and love it, the 
nation that stood the strain of the greatest of civil wars, the 
nation that has stretched across mountains and prairies and 
plains to the shores of a second ocean, the nation that has 
resisted every attempt to debase its currency and to impair 
its credit, the nation that is not afraid of permitting indi- 
vidual citizens to exert their powers to the utmost if only they 
injure no one of their fellows, — that is the nation which Hamil- 
ton's vision foresaw and for which the labor of his life was 
given. 



•■^NpSH., 




OF THE 



-T 



O 



CityofPerth Amboy 

MIDDLESEX Co. N.J. 

C.F.Hall. 1899, 





THun KULL OB 



